


One Hell of a Messenger

by Antiquity



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Assumed Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 08:12:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10658517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antiquity/pseuds/Antiquity
Summary: Against his will, his better judgement, hell, all his experience on these goddamn cursed streets of Gotham, Thomas finds himself wanting to listen. It all seems too good to be true, Bruce being the one to survive, finding himself a partner…fuck, the world is ending, he’s got some lunatic claiming to be from an alternate universe sitting in his damp shithole of a hideout beneath the ruined skeleton of what used to be a great estate, and he’s trying to wrap his head around the fact that his son is gay.





	One Hell of a Messenger

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as 'let me see if I can re-write movie scenes to include a bit more realistic BruceDick slash' and turned, after I watched the Flashpoint Paradox, into a character study with liberal sprinkles of implied, read-it-how-you-want slash. I haven't tagged for graphic violence, but there is some canon roughness ahead.
> 
> Uh, hope you like it!
> 
> It's not necessary to have watched Flashpoint Paradox to understand this - basically, provoked by his enemy Thawne, the Flash goes back in time to save his mother and accidentally creates an alternate reality where Bruce died in the alley, his father Thomas became a more brutal Batman, and the world is being torn apart by a war between Wonder Woman and her Amazons and Aquaman and the Atlanteans. If you have watched it, I've included the minute marks where the scenes, whether canon or inserted, take place.

**Canon from 20:40.**

There’s an intruder in the cave, standing in front of the gun and the picture, and Thomas doesn’t have to think before his fist lands solidly in the back of the man’s blond head. “Who are you?” he growls, looming over the lanky intruder as the man tries to keep his footing by the med bed. “I said,” he repeats, and lands one brutal punch after another in time with his questions, “Who – the hell – are you?”

With one last punch square in the face, the intruder goes reeling and lands flat on his ass, rubbing his chin. He’s gotta be at least fifty pounds lighter than Thomas but the idiot still tries to talk his way out of it.

“Bruce, wait! You have to remember! It’s me, it’s Barry! Barry Allen!”

That name –

What the fuck?

Rage ignites inside Thomas’ chest, all the dregs and scum of Gotham that gets washed inside him with every downturn this world takes beginning to rise as the stranger calls out his son’s name.

“Bruce!”

“Bruce?” He leans down and seizes the man by the collar, hauling him up to his feet to stare at him.

“Bruce,” the fucking idiot repeats, looking for all the world like he expects Thomas, or whoever’s under the mask, to respond to that name.

“Bruce is dead,” Thomas growls, “I watched him die.”

The man’s blue eyes widen even further, some sort of realisation filtering in. “My god… _he’s_ the one who died that night in the alley…” the intruder says to himself, revelation in his tone, and Thomas wants to kill him as the memory flickers once more into life – ha, fuck that’s hilarious – behind his eyes. His hand is so close to his throat… “Bruce died,” the stranger continues, and he obviously has a death wish, “and you lived…you’re his father. You’re Thomas Wayne!”

Shock almost as cold as his rage is hot cascades through Thomas. Who the fuck is this guy? How the hell does he know who Thomas is? Why does he sound so surprised that B – that his son isn’t here, that someone else is under this costume?

 

**Canon from 23:32.**

“Who are you?” He spits out once more, and when the man doesn’t answer, Thomas throws him bodily away like yesterday’s garbage and lunges for his hand. “Want to try again?” He asks, forcing the man’s shoulder, wrist and fingers back till they’re a few degrees short of snapping. Sick rage inside him flares at this man’s idea of a joke – is that it? Is he from that psychotic clown?

The man cries out but just says, “Wait, Thomas – uh, Mr Wayne – let me explain – it’s all different –”

 _Snap_.

The man yells in pain as his little finger shatters under Thomas’ grip.

“How do you know who I am,” Thomas asks again, backing into the open area of the cave with the man shuffling along on his knees.

“I told you! Everything changed –”

“You have nine more fingers,” Thomas tells him dispassionately. “I suggest you tell me how you found out about me.”

The man looks up, and Thomas has spent more than a decade in both Gotham’s underworld and it’s high-flying casinos: if he didn’t know better, he’d say the man was deadly serious. “In my world, I’m a hero, name: The Flash. Bruce took me here, showed me – aagghh!”

The snap of breaking bone is satisfying, as is the fact that he’s lost none of his old precision. “I used to be a doctor,” he says, and crouches down in front of this lunatic. “Mention my dead son again, and I will break out my surgical instruments.” He lets the man’s hand go and stands, looking down at the groaning heap on the floor, and then kicks him solidly in the ribs. Something metal dances along the floor of the cave as the man tumbles over, and the stranger reacts to the sound.

“My ring! Let me…show you I’m telling the truth…” he pants in pain, arm wrapped around his bruising ribs. “My uniform is in that ring!” He reaches out for it, but Thomas steps between them. Like hell is he going to let some stranger get hold of a possible weapon in his cave.

He picks the ring up and stares at it, at its lightning insignia. It seems to be exactly what it is, and he has no doubt he could take the man down if anything fishy – fishier – happens. “I’ll humour you,” he says, tossing the ring to him. The man fumbles it with his broken fingers but manages to catch it, and depresses some catch on the ring’s surface. Almost instantly, a garish mustard-yellow monstrosity flares out and puddles on the floor at Thomas’ feet.

“See, I _told_ you…” the man starts defiantly, before trailing off in obvious uncertainty. Now the fuck what? He reaches out and gathers up the yellow costume with its black and red insignia, frowning.

“Not what you were expecting?” Thomas asks, and doesn’t expect the man to hear the irony in his tone.

“No…” the man answers, but then looks up grimly. “Thawne.”

“Who?”

“The man this uniform belongs to. My opposite, the Reverse-Flash. Eobard Thawne.”

“What kind of name is Eobard?” Thomas scoffs.

“The twenty-fifth century kind,” Allen answers, and gets to his feet with an expression Thomas recognises as finally gathering the clues that lead to the solution. “He replicated the accident which allowed me to tap into the Speed Force, became a criminal: Professor Zoom.”

“Speed Force?” Thomas repeats, and the disbelief with which he’d greeted the man’s story is slowly beginning to war with the conviction in Allen’s face and voice. Then again, he could just be a madman wholly convinced in what he’s saying.

“The Speed Force allows both of us to bend the laws of physics using super speed,” Allen says with a completely straight, serious face. “He can travel through time.”

Thomas is fairly sure he can see where this is going. “You’re suggesting that he changed something in the past.”

“That changed everything,” Allen agrees, and then closes his eyes and shakes his head like he’s trying to chase off a bad dream. “It’s crazy: my mum’s alive, you’re Batman, and Diana and Arthur are about to start World War Three.” He looks down at the costume in his hands, and confusion flickers across his face. Boy, does this kid wear his heart on his sleeve or what. He’s not going to last two minutes out there. “But why give me this?”

Thomas scrutinises Allen, thinks through all he knows of humanity, whether in this fucking universe or the next. “He hates you,” he says a second later, sure that he’s right, and stalks towards his desk. “So much that he’ll destroy everything to kill you. But his psychosis requires that you know he’s responsible.” He grabs his flask and uncaps it.

“Could anyone, even Thawne, be that deranged?”

Thomas swallows down the mouthful of cheap spirit and stares up at the blood-spattered, ragged-edged playing cards tacked up on the board in front of him. This blue-eyed pup knows _nothing_. “You’d be amazed at the monsters this world can create.”

For a moment he wonders if he’s talking about the Joker, or himself.

“We have to stop this, Doctor Wayne,” Allen says from behind him, and isn’t that the strangest name he’s heard tonight. “Catch Thawne, find out what he changed and change it back before Aquaman and Wonder Woman kill everyone on the planet.”

“Not saying I believe you, but…” Thomas hears himself say, “In your reality, is my son…?” For a moment he doesn’t know what he’s asking, but he does know that it’s the lynchpin of this matter. For Bruce, he would do anything. Even the _possibility_ of Bruce is something he’d given up hoping for. Thomas still doesn’t know how much he believes, but there’s something about the kid’s reasoning, his stupid trusting face, his story about Bruce…

“Bruce is alive,” Allen says with strong, sure conviction. “He’s…Batman.”

Thomas turns. If what he’s put into his own masked identity, what he’s suffered, what he’s gone through as Batman, is anything like what Bruce has had to go through, it’s not much of a blessing – but it’s more than he’s ever had before. This dream of Bruce from another world, narrated by a stranger, is still more than he’d ever hoped he’d have. Bruce, alive!

“ _If_ ,” he says, stressing the syllable, “I were to help you, what exactly would we need?”

“Just what’s over there,” Allen replies, pointing a thumb over at the store of chemicals, “and unbelievably bad weather.”

Thunder rolls overhead.

“Welcome to Gotham,” Thomas says.

 

**Inserted additional scene after 26:11, before 29:57.**

Allen starts listing all the chemicals they’ll need as he starts to stride straight over, but Thomas grabs him.

“What?” he asks, looking nervous. Thomas doesn’t blame him.

“Hold still.” He finds some tape among the clutter on his desk and aligns the broken fingers. No need to make the night go any slower than it has to.

Allen winces and hisses, but then grins sheepishly at Thomas like he’s decided he’s relatively safe now that Thomas isn’t trying to break him – like he’s decided the mutual sharing of monsters means they’re friends. Thomas ignores him.

“I still can’t believe things have things changed so much,” Allen says as the tape is cut and finished. “Oh geez, Dick…” and that segue makes even less sense than travelling through time and creating an alternate universe – unless he’s insulting Thomas, but it’s so weak it’s laughable.

“That’s the worst you could come up with?”

“What? Oh, no, Dick as in Richard, Bruce’s partner. If Bruce is dead in this universe, he never met Dick.” Allen abruptly scrubs his good hand over his face, not noticing Thomas’ sudden shocked stillness. “Damn, I could really use his help. Poor kid, I hate to think of him alone out here in this messed up universe.”

Against his will, his better judgement, hell, all his experience on these goddamn cursed streets of Gotham, Thomas finds himself wanting to listen. It all seems too good to be true, Bruce being the one to survive, finding himself a partner…fuck, the world is ending, he’s got some lunatic claiming to be from an alternate universe sitting in his damp shithole of a hideout beneath the ruined skeleton of what used to be a great estate, and he’s trying to wrap his head around the fact that his son is gay.

His son is apparently alive in the reality which should have been this one, and has a partner with whom he fights crime. Well, that would negate the whole secret identity issue – an efficient arrangement, if not one fraught with more than a few additional difficulties. Thomas shakes his head at himself as his heart latches onto the meagre scraps of information about Bruce like a gnarled old bramble and his brain tries to dull the sentimentalism with matter-of-fact observations like that. Secret identity issue – what the hell are they, characters in a goddamned third-rate spy flick?

He sighs and pulls out his flask to down another gulp of shitty whiskey. Thomas already knows what’s going to come out of his mouth despite everything telling him otherwise. “Alright. What do we need.”

 

**Inserted additional scene before 55:49, after 55:48.**

Mishap upon near-death situation upon defeat upon rousing speech later, Thomas preps the plane for London – and it’s not the fucking Batplane; call it that again, Allen, and you’ll lose another finger. Refuelling takes some time, and while Thomas as a casino owner knows the value of patience, knows how important it is to ready the chips and prepare the dice, he fucking hates waiting. The Shazam kids are playing some stupid game by the hangar doors and Cyborg is staring off into space as he sorts through whatever data he feels he needs to. Allen is nearby, face drawn as he stares at the footage Cyborg downloaded of the pilot sent on a suicide mission which resulted in nothing but some sushi-sized chunks of sea monster.

“Anyone else you know?” he says suddenly, gesturing vaguely at the report. “Anyone in the resistance?” He intends to tell him about Lane onboard, but until then it’ll be useful to see if there are any other potential allies out there. Allen knew about the super-powered alien who crashed into Metropolis, knew the pilot, and claims to know the Amazon bitch and the Atlantean genocidal maniac, but there’s no way in hell Thomas is directly asking about his son’s partner.

Fuck, does he call him his boyfriend? The grief is his chest is as sharp as the day his boy died in his mother’s arms, rusted from time but still liable to cut through his ribs and probably give him tetanus for good measure, but the compression seems to ease with every story Allen tells. Every little insignificant detail about Bruce’s Batplane, about his expressions, about his habits – ‘he does that too, geez is it annoying’ – everything makes his boy real once more before his eyes. He’s so fucking proud, is the thing: so many years later he hears about his boy reaching the manhood that was denied him and finally feels that fatherly pride in what his son has accomplished. Allen ran straight to where he thought Bruce was when things didn’t add up, and that sort of trust, that loyalty, is something money can’t buy. _Bruce would have come_ , is what Allen had said before they started this last attempt.

“There’s got to be some others out there. We know Clark exists in this universe, and Victor and the Shazam kids are right here. There must be others, but I’m not big on networking. That’s more Bruce’s style. And Dick’s – man, what I wouldn’t give to have him here. He’s got so many friends in so many teams it’d be easy sourcing information and allies.”

“Bruce’s partner,” Thomas says as neutrally as he can, but luckily the speedster seems a little oblivious when it comes to tangents he’s not directly focusing on.

“Yeah. They’ve been together for ages, almost since the beginning of Bruce’s Batman career. He keeps Bruce sane and out of trouble – well, mostly – and Bruce…I’m not going to pretend I fully understand their relationship, and a lot of people were worried about how young Dick was when they first started, but they’re good for each other. Bruce grounds him, y’know? Gave him a home, a purpose. He’s so proud whenever he talks about Dick, even if they’re in a rough patch. I mean, I’ve seen them not talk to each other for months, but they somehow always find a way back to each other after a fight. I wonder what he’s like in this world, without Bruce. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow he also found a way to join the resistance. They’re both pretty devoted.”

Thomas listens greedily, soaking up the information about his son like a thirsty plant. Part of him, the grimy, corroded part that’s been living in Gotham’s darkest alleys ever since, is still sceptical that this isn’t the way it was meant to be, that there’s another better universe just around the corner, but the rest of him…Thomas turns his attention back to the note he’s writing. He’s mapped out as many contingency plans as he can, but one way or another this world is going to end. There may be a better one to take its place; there might not. Either way… he wonders if he should say something in his note about Dick. It’s a father’s prerogative, right, to tease and question and find out about his son’s love life?

Fuck, his boy, his baby, his son, alive!

Thomas’ hand shakes, and he uncaps his flask for another swig as he contemplates the final lines of the note. Bruce may be without parents that other world, but he’ll be alive – hell, maybe with Dick and Alfred he can have a family again, even be happy in some way. No matter how this world ends, if he has a chance to make sure his son lives, Thomas will destroy a hundred universes, a _thousand_ universes, to make that happen.

He decides against it in the end and folds up the note before tucking it away to give to Allen later. Hope is for foolish dreamers and weaklings, but he’s seen what Allen’s power can do, and for once, no matter if it makes him the most foolish of them all…Thomas hopes.

 

 


End file.
